Assuring that information is transported from one point to another with a certain quality-of-service (“QoS”), especially when the points are located in different domains (i.e., inter-domain) operated by different service providers, is important to the success of existing services as well as to enable the spread and growth of relatively new services, such as voice-over-Internet protocol (“VoIP”), multimedia and mission-critical services.
While the transport of information within a single domain (i.e., intra-domain) at certain guaranteed QoS levels has been the subject of considerable research for over a decade, little research has been done on the transport of information at certain guaranteed QoS levels in the inter-domain setting.
The transport of information over different domains involves issues that are not present in the intra-domain setting. For example, typically a service provider operating one domain (sometimes referred to as an “Autonomous System or “AS”) requires that its internal topology (e.g., path segments, links) be kept secret from all other service providers. Hereafter, we will use the terms “domains”, “AS”, and “network” to mean the same thing, that is, the physical infrastructure that is built, operated and maintained most often by a single service provider (e.g., Verizon).
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide methods and devices that enable the transport of information between different domains while assuring QoS levels and maintaining intra-domain, topological secrecy.